But for the Heart
by Rahmi
Summary: Post Lucifer Rising. The world ends, but Sam and Dean don't. Now they're on a journey across the worlds to find one another.
1. Dean in Wonderland

_Post Lucifer Rising on the Supernatural side. Anything in season 5-6 didn't happen, except that Castiel isn't dead. Post Chain of Memories on the Kingdom Hearts side._

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* * *

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Dean's adventures in Wonderland are more a combination of American McGee's Alice, the books, and the 1951 Disney movie than they are straight up Disney. I like to think that when Alice got back to Wonderland, she kind of fucking kicked ass.

_I lifted portions of the poem Jabberwocky from the books._

_There's some dialogue that I took from the game; specifically the phrase "how fine she looks when dressed in light" is a play on a quote from the Cheshire Cat in Alice. Additionally, the Jabberwock's eye being a weapon is also from the game. I believe that's about it._

**Wonderland**

Dean wakes up with his face in the dirt. He groans. If there's on constant in his life, it's the fact that he takes freakin' dirt naps whenever it's most inconvenient. The Devil's risen and he eats earth. Awesome.

"You alright, Sammy?" he asks.

When his brother doesn't respond, not even to groan or say something retarded like, "I hate your guts, go die in a fire," that's when Dean starts to worry. Sam may not be making any noise, but the sounds Dean's hearing do not belong next to a convent in Maryland.

"Your brother's not here," something trills, "Too dark for Wonderland, maybe, or maybe just not mad enough yet. He'll get there eventually. We all go mad here. You already are."

He opens his eyes so fast he forgets that he's, you know, face first in some dirt for a few seconds. Then he turns his head, one hand already groping for his misplaced gun, opens his mouth to tell that voice to go fuck itself, and freezes.

"Oh," Dean manages, "That is _so wrong._"

He's under a giant mushroom. And not a giant mushroom as in, 'hahaha, look at that mushroom Sammy, there's totally a fairy hiding under there,' but more like the mushroom is probably taller than he is (but not Sammy, maybe). It's freakish, is what it is.

"Over here," the voice says, "Or maybe I'm over there. It's so hard to tell sometimes."

"Yeah, if you're _crazy,_" Dean heaves himself to his feet, brushing off his jeans, and tries not to freak the fuck out. Okay, so maybe Lucifer decided to take him camping, or something, and he's down with that, really he is, because hey, he likes his eyes right where they are, but _where's Sammy?_

There's bad blood between them (Ruby's) and shitty decisions and one ultimatum that Dean should have fucking known better than to ever issue, but Sam's his brother, his to look after and beat on when he's done stupid shit. He needs to be _here._

"I did mention that we're all mad here, didn't I?" the voice says again. "Really, you should look up. There's nothing on the ground but more dirt and you've already met that."

"You should just shut the fuck up before I shoot your stupid ass," Dean warns. Except, yeah, he's still missing his gun. Castiel probably should have fucking given it back to him when he whipped him to where Sam was.

It's a forest, Dean realizes suddenly. A bizarre one with huge trees and mushrooms and water that looks like its painted on the ground instead of wet, but a forest. He's seen some strange shit in his time, been to Hell and lived to watch his brother let the Devil out, but there's no frame of reference for… this. "What the fuck?"

"Wonderland," the voice says, and suddenly there's a freakin' psychedelic cat perched on the mushroom top over his head, "Oh, it's a wonder, isn't it? You'll absolutely go mad for it, sooner or later!"

"I thought I was already mad?" Dean asks. He drops back down to feel around for Ruby's knife, not taking his eyes off the cat's psycho-killer smile, but the magical talking cat just chuckles and says, "There are no weapons like that in Wonderland, Dean. Can't go among the daft with pointy objects, now can we?"

It rolls onto its back and lolls its tongue out at him. "Of course," it says, "You _do_ keep what you bring, or what follows your heart. There's someone waiting for you in the Bizarre Room, you know. They're getting impatient."

Dean twitches. On the one hand, cat that smiles like a murdering psychopath and is probably lying. On the other hand, if Sam's waiting for him somewhere, if Sam's here, can he afford to ignore it? "Fine," Dean says, running a hand down his face, "Fine, you fugly freak of nature—"

"The Cheshire Cat can commence with alliteration like a champion," the cat says, laughing. It flicks out of reach when Dean takes a swing at it, half of its body disappearing to leave behind a macabre grin and a twitching tail. "The shadows are gathering 'round your friend, curious, curious. The lights are on, the shadow is large, and you'll be too late if you don't hurry."

This is like a bad dream, Dean decides, with something just out of reach and nobody willing to help you. "_Where_?" he demands.

"The upside-down room, of course! Where else would it be? The Queen's Road will lead the way."

Dean spins in a quick circle, but there's no trail on the ground, no path, and definitely nothing that's going to qualify as a road, shit crazy cat aside. He rubs his face again, suddenly dog tired, and wonders again where the fuck he is.

He's starting to get the feeling that he's not in America anymore. Or even the world, because he's never heard of anything like this before. Talking cats, sure, and fairy worlds, but there's no magic feeling here, and he'd been holding cold iron when Lucifer rose.

Questions and more fucking questions. They can wait until he has his geek boy kid brother next to him. "Which dirt path is the Queen's Road again?" he mumbles.

More laughter. "Oh, it doesn't matter," the cat says. It stretches onto its suddenly visible toes and bobs its head, mouth still stretched into that terrifying grin. "Pick a way, any way. All the ways are the Queen's Roads, so you can go left or right or up or down, and still find yourself just left of where you started."

"You stupid piece of shit, just tell me where to go!"

"I already told you," the cat says, disappearing completely. "Go left."

"Left," Dean says, "Of course." He turns to his left, then scowls and turns to the cat's left, and watches a path spool out under his feet. "No, that makes total sense," Dean says under his breath, and starts jogging anyway.

The more he runs, the stranger the world gets. He takes a chance and follows the road when it runs right over the "water," curses when his boots get wet even though the it feels just like ground instead of pond under foot. The trees get bigger, so of course the path climbs straight up one and onto a tree branch.

Dean catches his breath for a long minute before he spits, "Shit," and looks for something to climb on. The mushroom looks kind of sturdy, now that he thinks about it, so he goes to lean a hand against the top; it holds, even if it feels disgustingly squishy, so Dean scrambles up it and jumps for the branch before he can lose his nerve.

"Gonna kill that damn cat," he says direly, "Gonna hunt that little bitch _down_ and pump it full of iron."

Thank God, the road leads into a… strategically placed bush that's floating in thin air as far as he can tell. Dean sucks on his teeth. This place feels like a bad dream when he's _high_, but the path's reappears on that bush over there, so he takes a breath, backs up some, and goes for a running leap.

He's really freakin' surprised when he lands and the damn floating bush holds his weight.

"Almost there now," the cat suddenly says. "The shadows are stretching, though, so be careful. The Jabberwock's woken and eaten all the mome raths right up. Alice is getting ready to hunt it."

"Yeah?" Dean says absently, "And who's Alice?"

The cat's grin appears before the cat does, bobbing along at head-height in front of Dean. "Why, she's the Princess, of course. The Queen of Hearts tried to take off her head, but the Knight came and the Knave took her away."

"Yeah? Who brought her back, the Ace?"

"Oh, she came back by herself, our Alice," the cat says. "Be careful here, the floor's up top and the ceiling's down low."

"Of course it is," Dean says.

He drops down to the floor (ceiling?) with a grimace, batting away the cat's psycho grin when it gets in his way, and takes a good long look around the room he's found himself in. It's… big, is his first thought. Like. Giant baby big, with a teddy bear and a bed and a table that are all easily the size of small buildings.

"This isn't screwed up at all," Dean tells the cat, because, well, if he's gone friggin' insane like he's starting to suspect he has, it's not like talking to his head monsters is going to make much of a difference. "Gotta admit, I didn't think I was this fucked in the head, even after hell."

If Lucifer's idea of hell on earth is a freakin' loony bin dream, Dean supposes he should count his blessings. And he will. As soon as he finds Sam. Bad shit happens when he lets his brother go off and do his own thing.

"The Jabberwock with eyes aflame came waffling through the tugley wood," the cat sings, "The jaws that bite, the claws that catch, they'll tear your heart right out your chest." It's disappearing again when Dean's head whips around to glare at it, its toothy grin shining like a half-moon.

"That doesn't sound ominous at _all_," he says.

The ground starts shaking.

Dean curses, because he's got no fucking weapon, and the goddamn cat's gone suddenly, laughing like a hyena, all "aha, ahahaha."

The thing that comes into the giant room is really fucking strange, even by a hunter's standards. It's almost like a snake or a dragon, with a head like a deepwater fish and tattered wings. It shakes itself, tail thumping the ground, before it hisses, "I smell you. You don't belong to Wonderland."

"Jabberwock, Jabberwock," the cat says from over Dean's shoulder; he spins around to clock it one, managing to bust open his knuckles on its grin. The damn cat keeps right on grinning. "Alice is coming for your head!"

"She can try, Cat," the Jabberwock murmurs, "A Princess has no place in a fight, and no Knight protects her heart. The heartless will rejoice to have such a leader."

"Silly monster," a girl's voice suddenly says, "Don't you know a Princess of Heart can't be made into a heartless at all?"

"There's always a first," the Jabberwock says, "And even if there isn't, it will get rid of you and this world can fall like it was always meant to."

The girl's enough to freak Dean right the fuck out. He doesn't really like little girls at the best of time, because, well, they do things like wish for their teddy bears to come to life. This girl, though, she's got big blue eyes and long blonde hair and one of those freaky blue dresses on, the old time ones that make Dean think of mental institutions for some reason.

Oh, yeah, and she's got a motherfucking knife.

"I don't much like the thought of Wonderland going dark," the girl says.

Dean's kind of an expert on knife throwing. He has to be, after twenty-five years of hunting. So he knows what the girl's gonna do as soon as she pulls her hand back in that position, but the knife in her hand is way too long to make an effective projectile.

"Don't throw that," Dean warns under his breath.

"You should heed the warnings," the Jabberwock says. It sits back on its haunches and grins, teeth dripping something that _eats_ at the… ceiling, he guess. This room is seriously fucked up. "I'll take your heart when you miss."

"You shan't."

There's something really fucking familiar about that knife, Dean thinks as he drops to the ground and scrambles towards the girl. She's still standing there, still standing like she's thinking about throwing that familiar fucking knife instead of ducking for cover and using a weapon that makes more _sense_ on something that big.

"Down," Dean shouts, except the girl turns to look at him and says, "Oh, who are you?" and casually throws her only weapon in the same breath.

The explosion of light that follows sears Dean's eyes. He slams them closed on instinct, horror rising, because it feels like _Lucifer_ again, like maybe he's waking up just when he was deciding he already was.

He gropes out with one hand, but there's still no giant dork of a brother clinging to his sleeve. Just a girl that makes an undignified noise and hits his hand when it touches her shoulder.

Something lands on his back as he hunches. "You won't burn up," the cat says, "Alice is too kind for that." It makes a considering noise. "How fine she looks when dressed in light."

Dean takes a couple of steps back, jumps when his back hits something cool and metal and _familiar._ His palm slams against it without conscious thought; he'd recognize his baby anywhere, and that means freakin' _weapons_ when he can stand to open his eyes.

He's really freakin' hoping that the Jabberwock is as blind as he is at the moment.

(He's not thinking about how the fuck his car got here.)

"You can open your eyes now," the girl (Alice?) says. "The light's gone, and so is the Jabberwock. You didn't tell me it would… melt like that, Cat."

Dean pries one eye open with a healthy dose of caution. The crazy fucked up room comes into focus, instead of the Convent, and he can't help the sigh. He's starting to think that he really is here, wherever here is. God, he hopes not.

How screwed up is his life that he wishes this is a dream and he can go back to clutching Sam (Sam, Sam, where is his brother in all of this, Jesus Christ) in the presence of the Devil.

The Impala does not look like herself, Dean realizes as soon as his eyes are open far enough to look. She's… lumpy, which Dean would have never fucking stood for, and she's. Okay, see, he's seen his car stripped down to the frame. He's pretty sure she's never looked like the bastard child of a spaceship and Sammy's scribbles when he was four.

"What the fuck did you do to my _car?_" slips out.

"Don't mind the dead monster," Alice says, "Obviously, your… machine is more important."

The Impala's engine revs like she's laughing at him. Dean stares at her for a few long seconds before he very grudgingly starts to stumble his way through an exorcism.

The damn cat laughs. Again. "Even a puppet can have a heart," it says, "Is it that surprising that she does as well? But, oh, you were looking for little baby brother, weren't you? That shadow isn't here."

"Silly old mangy cat," the girl says, reaching out to pat it on its head with one dainty hand. "You shouldn't speak in riddles to someone who doesn't know Wonderland at all." Dean attempts a grin when she turns and curtsies to him, suddenly. "Welcome to Wonderland, good sir."

The monster's really fucking dead behind her. Like. Pile of oozing black bodily fluids dead, its face seared half off and the rest of it charred to a particularly friggin' nasty shade of black. The knife's not on the corpse, but he's damn sure it wasn't what did this to the monster. A flamer-thrower, maybe. A knife? Definitely not.

He's not gonna ask.

Dean gives Alice a look he's pretty sure is full of what he considers to be a healthy amount of respect, because, well, holy fucking shit. "Really, I'm pretty sure I'm just on the crazy train right now. I'm hoping I wake up soon."

The girl blinks at him before shaking her head suddenly. "You're not from this world, are you?" she asks. "Like Sora, Donald, and Goofy? Are you visiting?"

"No, oh no, Alice my dear," the cat says, propping its head on its paws, "His world's gone and the shadows spilled him up here, right in the Jabberwock's path. He's looking for his brother, you see, and there isn't such a thing in all of Wonderland. Too much light in you for someone like that to be drawn here."

"I see," says Alice. "The White Queen was wondering which star went out last night."

"Seriously," Dean says, "Ready to wake up at any time over here."

"It's not a dream, though I know Wonderland feels like it at times." Alice clasps her hands behind her back and rocks on her heels, daintily side-stepping a spreading pool of black blood. "Are you from a world that doesn't know, then?"

"Look, kid, as far as I'm concerned, this is all a really shitty dream I'm having at a really shitty time," he says pointedly. "Apparently, Satan's managed to knock a screw loose or something, but I would really like to wake up. Or find my brother," Dean adds as an afterthought.

Not an afterthought, actually, because if he's _not dreaming_, he sure as fuck needs to know where Sam is.

"We're all mad here," Alice says absently. "Cat?"

The cat hums a few bars, out of key, and says, "His world fell to light and then the shadows slipped in and wiped it all away. He's here because you needed the Vorpal Blade. Nothing here for him now."

"And my brother?" Dean makes himself ask. He can't. If the world's gone and he's on another one, Sam's safe too. Sam is not gone with the Earth because if he was, Dean's going to kill him.

"The Cheshire Cat is usually right about these things, when he wants to be," Alice says. "If he says your brother isn't in Wonderland at all, I would take his word for it. I'm sorry we can't be of more help."

The Cheshire Cat stirs, crawling up Alice's back to perch on her head with a wink. "Give him the Vorpal Blade, Alice," he says, his grin spreading wide. "It's his, after all, and the Jabberwock's eye will make an ever so much better weapon for you."

"His eye?" the girl gives the corpse a baleful look, then shrugs and hands Dean the knife in her hand. "If you say so, Cat."

It's Ruby's knife. Of course it is. Dean wipes the black ichor off onto his pants and decides he really doesn't want to watch a little girl go dig the eye out of a monster's corpse. "This thing isn't a Vorpal Blade," Dean says, "Whatever that is."

The cat tips onto its head, literally, all four of its paws perched on the back of its own skull. "It killed the Jabberwock, didn't it?" it asks.

It's not worth arguing about. "So how do I blow this joint, then?"

"There are pathways," the cat says, "Your girl can show you the ways."

"I thought all ways are the Queen's ways?" Dean ribs. He stares at the Impala, at the strange sleek lines of her now. She almost looks like a kid's fucking lego project, all in black, but the outside's still paint slick and cold under his fingertips.

He wonders if all his weapons are inside of her like the should be.

"Hmm?" Alice looks up from where she's sizing up the Jabberwock corpse and smiles. "No," she says, "Not anymore. All ways are _my_ ways, you see, since I was pawn to queen. You can find your way, though, by borrowing one of mine. It shan't be hard."

"Oh," Dean says, dropping his head back to roll his eyes at the ceiling. Floor. Whatever was up. "If it 'shan't be hard!'"

"You're full of complaints for someone who needs to leave quickly," Alice notes. "He isn't on this world. You need to travel to others to look for him; you can use a path of mine to leave here, but after that you're going to be on your own. I don't know how to navigate your machines. We didn't need them."

That makes so much sense. No. Really. Dean sort of feels like _crying_ right now. Instead, he says, "I need to find my brother." Might as well latch on to one thing if everything else was fucking him up.

Sam was always worth latching on to.

"Then you should get into your machine and leave," Alice says. "Cat, can you assist me, please? I don't want to get this on my hands."

Dean would much rather puzzle over how the fuck to get the Impala open than turn around and figure out exactly what is making that squishing noise, thanks. The Impala opens with the same old familiar creak when he presses a palm to her side, and she's bigger than she looks from the outside. Dean stands in the doorway and stares for a little while, because "bigger" doesn't cover the amount of space he's seeing.

"Dean," Alice says.

"Yeah?"

"I hope you find your brother."

Sam might hate him when he finds him again. Dean still wants to punch his lights out and lock him up somewhere until he's sober. But, yeah, he really, really wants to find him first. Stupid little brothers should not be let out on their own.

"Me too," he sighs.

The Impala's spacious on the inside, but she starts up with the same familiar rumble when he slides into what he's going to assume is the driver's seat. She's not like she's supposed to be, but. You know. He's pretty damn sure he's not sleeping, because he's never dreamed his girl's a spaceship before.

And if this isn't a dream, if he's really on another fucking world because Lucifer wiped his, he needs to find Sam. He _refuses_ to believe that Sam could have died with the world, alright, he's just not freakin' going there. His brother's out there, lost, and possibly still high on demon blood and his girlfriend's death.

Dean needs to find him. Now.

He rubs a hand down his face and sighs. "This is so fucked up," he mutters.

Something thumps onto the Impala. Dean looks up, catches a glimpse of it, and then gives it a long, loving view of his finger. The damn cat's grinning at him from the windshield.

"I'm going to take you out someday," Dean promises it with a grimace, and guns the engine. He probably should have been, but he's totally not prepared to end up in _outer space_ about ten seconds later, the Impala purring like laughter under him.


	2. Sam in the Land of Departures

_Part the second. In which Sam and Riku are really, really emo at each other._

* * *

**Land of Departures**

"… don't… for this… now!"

"There's… to help a… need."

"… know him?"

"No but… like to."

Sam doesn't recognize the voices, but his entire body feels like it's burning from the inside out, so he doesn't care. There are colors dashing across the lids of his eyes, something heavy twisting in his stomach, and he doesn't even manage to roll over before he's throwing up and choking on his own vomit.

"Whoa, hey… help… Riku."

Hands catch him and get him on his side before he can drown. Sam wants to scream; whoever it is isn't gentle and it feels like knives stabbing into his skin.

"That's because you deserve it," someone says very close to his ear.

Sam can't pry his eyes open, but he listened to that voice scream and beg for hours before he killed her. He doesn't need to open his eyes to know who it is. "Sorry," he manages, "Sorry."

"None… that," one of the voices says firmly. Green light blooms behind his eyes and the pain eases off and away suddenly. "You should probably sleep through this, pal," the voice continues. "It's not going to be pleasant."

"We _really_ don't have time for this, your Majesty." The hands propping him up let him sink against the ground again. "The Organization's on the move again."

A hand lands in his hair. "Come on, pal, there's always time to help out."

"You said that before."

* * *

Sam wakes with his head pillowed on something that smells a little like rodent. He wrinkles his nose and rolls over; he might not hate rats as much as Dean does, but he still doesn't want to snuggle with one.

He shuts down that train of thought, fast. The thought of Dean physically _hurts_, all tangled up with a feeling of nausea and what-have-I-done. Dean had clutched at him when the light spilled into the convent, but that doesn't _mean_ anything, not after what he's done.

"You're leaking darkness all over the place," someone says, throwing themselves on the ground next to him. Sam jumps and scrambles away on his ass, fingers groping for his missing gun. It's _missing_ of course; he hadn't needed it going after Lilith.

Between Ruby and his powers…

"Stop it." The kid next to him rakes his hair out of his eyes and scowls. "Seriously, you're going to make the Nobodies curious if you don't quit."

"I'm not doing anything," Sam snaps back. It's automatic little brother behavior, Dean blaming him for breathing too loud and Sam whining. Dean asking him to stay and Sam's fingers around his throat.

Something hits him on the forehead.

The kid's staring at him when he looks up. Sam says "Christo," before he can think about it. Grey hair isn't natural on someone that young and the eyes staring at him are a shade of green that isn't physically possible.

The boy's head just tilts. "That your name?" he asks. "Anyway, you might want to watch your darkness. You don't want the attention of things in this world that like the dark."

"You're confusin' him, pal," someone else says, high-pitched. Sam turns his head to look and then ends up staring.

"There's a giant mouse over there," he says. The kid might be a supernatural freak, but at least he's a human looking supernatural freak.

"Your Majesty…"

The anthropomorphic mouse pats the boy on his shoulder and grins, nose twitching. "Ah, shucks, pal, what have I told you about that? The name's Mickey!"

"You're a giant mouse," Sam points out helpfully. Any thoughts of Dean are knocked right out of his head at the moment because _there's a giant mouse in black leather standing there smiling at him._ Sam thinks, for a moment, that he really misses when his life didn't involve giant mice, killer trucks, and demons.

Oh. There's the guilt again.

"Seriously," the kid says, "Do something about him, Mickey. Please. He's giving me a headache."

The kid reaches behind Sam, carefully, his eyes on him at all times, and pulls what Sam was using as a pillow over towards him. It's a coat, Sam realizes a little hysterically, one that the mouse puts on with another smile and a little laugh.

"Will do," the mouse says cheerfully. "Thanks a bunch for lookin' out for him while I talked to Minnie, pal!"

"Sure."

Dean and Dad didn't raise Sam to sit around staring in horror at monsters in the dark. He's aware of it, distantly, but at the same time, Lucifer's just risen, he's… somewhere dark without his brother, and if the monsters want to banter with each other while he takes stock, that's fine with him.

He has no weapons. He has no powers. He has no _brother_, and for the time being he shoves that thought somewhere down deep and ignores the kid's faintly mocking, "_Finally._ Thank you."

He doesn't know where the hell he is, either, and at least that's something he can figure out without moving.

Prairie land, is his first thought. Flat grassland as far as the eye can see under a sky that doesn't hold any recognizable constellations. Sam stares up at it for a hopeless moment, trying to pick out Sirius or Orion before he gives up.

Sam starts when the mouse drops down on his left, crouching back on its haunches like a rat with food. "The stars here aren't goin' to look like the ones on your world," the mouse, Mickey, says sympathetically. "I don't know where your world was, but we're near Disney Castle now."

World? "What do you mean?" Sam asks.

He's been screwing a demon. He can talk to an anthropomorphic mouse for a few minutes before deciding if it's enough of a monster to need killing.

"Your world is different than this one," says Mickey. "There's a lot of them out there; nobody knows how many. But sometimes the darkness comes and destroys them, and people wash up on different worlds, if their hearts are strong enough."

Sam digests that, or tries to. It would… make sense, he guesses. As much as the rest of his life makes sense, anyway, because he's been fucking a demon, he released the Adversary, and he has a brother who was pulled out of hell by angels.

"Leaking," the kid says again.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Sam snaps.

The kid tilts his head at him, his eyes wide and a ridiculous shade of green that shouldn't be possible, even with contacts. "Every time you think of whatever it is you're thinking about, you start to… leak darkness, for lack of a better word. It's going to make something take notice sooner or later."

Sam can't help it. He stares. "You're saying that my emotions are having some sort of affect on you," he says slowly. He's never heard of actual, functioning empathy before.

"They're affecting the _world_," the kid says, scowling, "Not just me. I can just smell it coming off of you."

The boy's claiming to smell Sam's brooding. Wouldn't Dean have a field day with this.

"That. Right there." The kid jabs a finger at him, crouching down next to Mickey the giant mouse. "You need to stop doing that before you get their attention." He rubs one hand suddenly across his eyes. "It's also giving me a headache."

"You should go take a break, pal," Mickey says. It reaches out to rub a careful hand (four fingered, Sam notices a little hysterically, normal mice do not have four fingers, let alone mice the size of small children) across the kid's back.

The kid makes a noise of agreement and heaves himself to his feet. "I need to go get something," he says, "He's your pet project, you watch him, alright?"

"Riku." Riku pauses, his back to them, but the mouse just puts his hands on his hips and smiles again. "Be careful, huh? Don't get yourself hurt goin' someplace you don't need to, okay?"

"Yeah."

"And go see Sora, will ya? Your light's startin' to get a little sad."

"My light's fine," Riku says, "So's my darkness. Seeing Sora just… upsets me. He's never that still for this long."

"It's not your fault," Mickey says firmly.

Riku waves a hand behind him; Sam almost jumps to his feet when the air _tears_, demon darkness flickering to life in front of the kid. "Yeah, it is," Riku says, "But thanks for trying to make me feel better. I'll catch up to you later."

The kid's gone a second later, the darkness sealing up behind him like stitching together a wound.

Mickey makes a noise under his breath that reminds Sam of when he and Dean had to lure a giant snake out with terrified rodents years ago. He breathes, tries to make some kind of sense over all of this, except that's _impossible._

The stars are different. He just watched a boy walk into a door made of darkness and disappear.

"If this is a different world, where's my brother?" Sam blurts out.

The mouse stops looking after Riku to give him a sympathetic glance. "If his heart was strong enough, he might've washed up somewhere else," it says. "Different hearts are drawn to different places."

"If?"

Mickey rubs the back of his neck with one palm. "When a world falls, sometimes people make it out. Sometimes they don't. Nobody is really sure what makes a person's heart strong enough to withstand the destruction, but some people just… don't make it. Don't you worry, though! When Sora wakes up, he'll put everything to rights again, just you wait."

Sam feels panic try to climb up his throat. Dean can't be gone. Dean doesn't know how _sorry_ he is, Dean doesn't know that Sam's perfectly willing to stay put and let him use Ruby's knife if that's what it takes, Dean doesn't know. Dean can't be gone because Sam needs his brother to still be there.

"You don't know my brother," Sam says, but he's trying to convince himself more than he's talking to Mickey, and it comes out weak.

Dean should have been _here._ Sam was holding on to him when the world ended, when Lucifer rose. They should have ended up in the same place if any of this is true.

He doesn't want to know what it says about Sam's heart that he ended up here, with a giant mouse and a boy that says he can smell darkness whenever Sam feels his guilt start to choke him. He desperately wants Dean; he really hopes that Dean ended up somewhere that'll make him _happy_, instead of so dead and tired inside.

"Riku ended up on a completely different world than his friends," Mickey offers gently, "Sora woke up in Traverse Town. Kairi was found in Neverland. Just because your brother isn't here with you doesn't mean he's fallen into the darkness."

"What about your world?" Sam forces himself to ask.

"Disney Castle," Mickey says wistfully. "My wife's there. I'm helpin' to keep it safe by fightin'."

"And Riku's?"

"Destiny Islands. Sora brought them back a few months ago, but Riku doesn't want to go home yet. He still has things to do."

Sam shivers at the thought of someone having the power to do that, just bring a world back from destruction. Even the angels don't have that kind of power, not if Castiel can be believed; they can't even stop demons from destroying a world. "Who's Sora?"

"The Keyblade Master," Mickey says. Sam can hear the capital letters.

"Start at the beginning," Sam says. He drops his hands between his knees and registers for the first time that while he aches, the low grade pain that's been dogging him for months is gone.

Addiction, he realizes in hindsight, a jones for the next fix, but it's gone now. He feels steady on his feet (or his ass, since he's sitting) for the first time in months, since he let Ruby draw a knife down her arm and _wanted._

He still _wants_ to drink blood, but the shaking pain of detoxing is gone like it's never been.

"How long was I asleep?" Sam demands suddenly.

"About a day," Mickey says. "You were in a bad way, pal. I had to pour a lot of curing magic into you to keep you goin'. Riku was concerned your darkness was gonna overpower you for a little while there. I'm glad you're okay."

"Curing magic?" Sam repeats dumbly.

Magic is about desperation and exchange. He should know. When Dean was dying (the first time, not the second or third or fourth) Sam researched magic like other people researched vacations. There hadn't been anything feasible, though, so Sam turned to his faith and he feels a hysterical laugh bubbling up three years later.

Of course his faith let him down. It had to have known he was going to let Lucifer out and destroy his world.

"How 'bout I start at the beginnin'?" Mickey politely looks away while Sam rubs at his face, trying to breathe. "What's your name?"

"Sam," Sam manages, his mouth twisting beneath his hand, "Sam Winchester. I'm the one who ended my world."

He's not expecting the hand on his back, or to be able to recognize sympathy in rodent eyes. "You should talk to Riku, when he gets back," is all Mickey says about that, and then, "I'm Mickey Mouse. You're in the Land of Departures, or what remains of it."

Sam's head is spinning by the time Riku returns. Worlds and darkness and light, and a _child_ with the weight of all the worlds on his shoulders. Sam wants to ask the keyblade why it decided a boy was the best chance to save them all, but it's not like he did better saving his world.

Maybe a kid can do it because an adult can't.

Dean would probably laugh at that and point out that they were saving people when they were that age.

The darkness boils off to his right suddenly, and spits out a stumbling kid in black. Sam stretches his legs and watches covertly as Riku stumbles, one hand clutching at his chest before he manages to steady himself.

"You alright?"

Riku grunts, holding up his free hand to ward Sam off, even though Sam's not planning on getting up.

Mickey's sleeping curled up like, well, a sleeping mouse in his coat, his head pillowed on a dog that'd mysteriously shown up a couple hours ago. The sun's still not up; Sam's pretty sure it's not going to rise if it hasn't by now.

"Fine," Riku finally manages. He stalks closer, boots crunching grass underfoot, and drops something into Sam's lap before he throws himself to the ground beside him.

"What's this," Sam asks redundantly. It's a coat, heavy and black, with silver clasps.

Riku pulls his knees up. "Your darkness is pretty strong," he says, "The Nobodies are going to sense that and try to turn you into a heartless. That will make you harder to track."

"Thank you," Sam says. He twists his fingers in the fabric and chances a smile towards the sullen kid. If this is what Sam was like at this age, it's no wonder Dean was always putting weird shit into his shampoo.

"Don't," the kid says, "You'd be a pain to destroy if you were a heartless. Darkness that strong always is. I'm just doing it because I have better things to do than kill you."

Sam bites his tongue to keep the smart ass comments back. The kid's not a very good actor. He can see the gloved hands clenching on his thighs, so he just says, "Am I gonna look like I'm waiting for the floods?" mildly instead of calling him on it.

A snort. "Nah," Riku says. "Lexaeus was at least as big as you. I took one of his."

Sam drops his own jacket on the ground and pulls on the coat, wincing at the feel of stiff leather on his arms. The coat's actually too long in the arms, which is a first for him in years, drooping over the tips of his fingers. He raises his eyebrows. "How big was Lexaeus?"

"Big," says Riku. He rubs at one shoulder. "He almost took my arm off swinging his sword."

Yeah, Sam had noticed the slight imbalance on that side of the boy, the way he held his arm like he wasn't quite sure if it'd ever stop hurting. Dean used to do that before he came back new; his brother's left shoulder had been ripped out of socket often enough that a routine fall would sometimes result in a sling.

"You have healing magic here, don't you?" Sam can't imagine Mickey let Riku stand around hurting.

"I can't use elemental magic, other than the obvious." Riku raises one eyebrow and gestures down at himself. Sam takes in the black cloak and the boots, but he doesn't know if that's supposed to have specific meaning he's missing. He nods anyway. "It doesn't work right on me, either. Mickey tries, but it's usually easier to let me heal on my own unless I have enough potions to fix it outright."

Sam does up the clasps on his coat while he thinks of something to say.

"The coat helps," Riku says, interrupting his train of though. He's offering a small smile when Sam looks over, but his eyebrows are still scrunched together in pain. "You can go back to emo brooding, if you want. I won't really be able to tell."

"I have a lot to brood about."

"Yeah, so does everyone else. We just do it when we're not in enemy territory."

Sam pushes his hair out of his eyes before he works on rolling the sleeves of his new coat up. "If I understood your friend right," he says, "I helped to end my world."

Riku snorts. "Join the club," he says, "I'll raise you a, 'I betrayed my best friend and hid the girl he loved from him' to that, though."

"I betrayed my brother." Inexplicably, Sam wants to smile. He tamps down on it. Dean's out there, somewhere, and yeah, he might be safer away from Sam, but that doesn't stop the fierce need to make sure he's okay.

He's pretty sure he lost that right months ago, but his subconscious isn't listening.

"Is that all?" Riku scoffs, folding his arms across his legs in a way that highlights how _young_ he is.

Sam bites back the phrase, "I also fucked a demon and let her lead me around by my ego and my dick," but only because the kid's way too young to know that kind of thing. Even if Sam was around that age when he lost his virginity.

Riku's looking at him knowingly all the same, his head dropped down against his forearms. "That's what darkness does," he says. "It takes what you give it, and it gives you just enough back that you keep giving it more of your heart until you realize there's nothing but darkness in there."

"Is that what happened to you?"

Riku's mouth twists. "I threw away my home, and then my best friends because I listened to the darkness," he says flatly. "I let a witch use me to hurt innocent girls. I tried to kill my best friend because he hurt my feelings. Yeah, that's what happened to me."

"I tried to kill my brother," Sam admits. He breathes in and out in the silence that follows before he amends, "I didn't try to kill him. I wanted to hurt him. He always treated me like a kid, you know? I wanted to make my own decisions, even if they were the wrong ones."

"Yeah," the kid breathes.

He's about two seconds from asleep when Sam looks over. His hair's in his eyes and he's got the hood of his coat pulled half on, just enough that it's hiding his ears. "So we're sleeping here?" he can't help but ask.

"Yeah," Riku says, "Tomorrow, we'll show you something cool."

"I need to find my brother," Sam points out.

"We'll help you do that tomorrow, too. Right now, I need sleep and Mickey won't wake up for another few hours."

"Does the sun rise in this world?"

One eye opens to peer at him, still startlingly green in all that pale skin. "Dawn's a few hours off," Riku repeats slowly, "It stays dark here for a long time, but the sun rises eventually. Mickey has a proverb about it."

"I'd rather not hear it," Sam admits, sitting down again.

"Good, because I'm pretty sure I slept through it."

* * *

"Twilight Town," Sam repeats dubiously. It hasn't escaped his attention that all the worlds they talk about sound like they've been named by five year olds, but Twilight Town has got to take the cake.

"We're actually goin' to the Mysterious Tower," and yeah, there's that five year old again, "Yen Sid's got some stuff he wants to show me and Riku's gonna track down DiZ while we're there."

"Okay, so how're we getting there?"

Riku shifts on his feet while Mickey scratches at the back of his head. "Mickey's going to use the keyblade," Riku says. "You're going to come with me."

Sam thinks he probably would have put up more of a fight if he knew what going with Riku was going to entail. He woke up tired, though, with the light of this world's sun on his face; it's just the slightest shade off what it should be, and it's driving Sam insane. So he shrugs his shoulders, trying to get familiar with the feel of heavy leather on his shoulders, and follows Riku off a few paces.

"The corridors of darkness want to eat you," Riku says bluntly, raising one hand, "The coat should help, but you need to be really careful not to start thinking about something that makes you sad, okay?"

He tears open a hold in the world before Sam can ask what the hell he meant by it _wanting to eat him_, which is probably just as well.

The corridor of darkness still looks like a mess of demons, Sam decides. It doesn't shift quite as much and there are hints of violet and blue in the streamers of darkness, but it's still not something he wants to go tromping through. Riku waves him into it, though, so Sam takes a breath and goes.

It's even worse on the inside of it. It's like standing in the sky, or being surrounded by the demons as they streamed out of hell, and Riku says, "Hey, do _not_ keep thinking about whatever it is you're thinking about. You need happy thoughts in here or else we're going to be in trouble."

Sam squints at the back of Riku's coat before he deliberately thinks about prank wars with Dean and Jess's smile. Riku's shoulder relax a fraction and the whispers Sam hadn't even noticed stop.

He looks out into the darkness and realizes that it's _moving_. He sees gold eyes for a split second, regarding him with the same frank, dead gaze that he remembers in his nightmares still, and trips over his own feet trying to pull an exorcism out of his numb brain.

"It's just the Heartless," Riku mutters, "They're not going to come over here as long as you don't start throwing off darkness."

The gold eyes blink and are joined by another pair, then another. "Right," Sam says, swallowing, "Just the Heartless who destroy worlds. Nothing to worry about."

Riku throws a strained grin over his shoulder. "Exactly."

They walk. Sam is just starting to get the hang of ignoring all the eyes and the chattering of something that almost sounds like ritual Latin when Riku stumbles and throws out a hand.

"Ready or not," he says faintly, and everything explodes into light.

When Sam can see again, he's flat on his back with Riku on his knees next to him, groaning soft and low under his breath. "Okay," he pants, "That's harder than doing it by myself."

Sam reaches out to offer support to Riku, feeling his shoulders quiver under his hand, and says, "I'm sorry."

"Not your fault," the kid says, and looks at him with bright gold eyes.

He reels.

"Christo," Sam spits out. He can't believe he's been so _stupid_. Yeah, another world, right, of course, who the hell believes something like that when they've grown up with fairies and demons? He already knows the Yellow Eyed Demon could get into his head, what the hell made him think something else couldn't?

He's an idiot. Of course this isn't real.

The demon doesn't flinch; the Yellow Eyed Demon hadn't flinched at holy water, though, so that doesn't mean jack shit. Especially if he's dealing with an angel, or something that used to be. Lucifer's risen.

"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus," he begins anyway. The demon blinks at him, its eyes fading back to inhuman green. Sam bares his teeth at it and grinds out, "Omnis satanica protestas—"

"Oh, geez," the demon says, "You're doing it again." The demon presses the back of a hand to its eyes, but it still doesn't flinch or even really acknowledge Sam, so he switches to a different exorcism, the Latin rolling easy and sweet off his tongue.

What he wouldn't give for Ruby's knife right now.

"I'm going to kill you, you son of a bitch," Sam says in a break between words.

The demon drops its hand and blinks at him, a pin scratch frown between its eyebrows. "I really don't know what just set you off," it says.

"You're a demon," Sam says flatly. "Ergo draco maledicte et section."

"Do I look like Pain and Panic to you?" The demon tries to push itself to its feet and fails, slipping back to all fours. "Seriously, what's the problem?" it asks.

Sam wishes for his knife. Any of them. They wouldn't do any good against the demon that's pretending to be a kid, but they'd make him feel a little better. He doesn't have salt on him either, because it makes (made) Ruby nervous, or holy water because it makes Sam uncomfortable. All he has is his voice and it doesn't seem to be working.

The demon tries again for its feet just as a new voice says, "Hold."

He freezes. He doesn't want to, but it's suddenly not up to him. It's almost like being held back by a demon only… friendlier. It doesn't make him feel any better, especially when the demon heaves itself up and away to lean against a wall.

There's an old gray man with crazy eyes and an honest to God wizard hat holding his hands up. Sam glares and tries to spit out the next part of the exorcism, but his mouth is frozen.

The demon's isn't. "Yen Sid," it starts, "I don't know what just happened."

"Show respect, boy," Yen Sid says, "I have been a master of magic for longer than you've been alive. Use my title or do not address me at all."

The demon rolls its eyes. "I'm not calling you 'master' anything," he retorts. "I'm not calling anyone master ever again."

"Then you'd best keep your mouth shut," Yen Sid says, folding his hands into his sleeves. "How the king ever took up with such a rude child…"

"Yeah, sure. Do you know what's gotten into _him?_"

Sam narrows his eyes, which is about the only movement he has at this point. He can't even open his mouth to tell them exactly what he's going to do, what his brother's going to do when he finds out what's happened.

He purposefully quiets the part of him that says Dean would be grateful to them for dealing with him so his brother doesn't have to get fraternal blood on his hands.

"Your world has Heartless," Yen Sid says.

Just like that, Sam's mouth is his own again. "My world has _demons_," Sam snaps. "You should know, you're standing right next to one."

"While I agree that young Riku has abominable manners, I would hardly call him a demon." Yen Sid motions with the fingers of one hand; Sam watches him warily when his body abruptly sags back under his control. "The Heartless of your world respond to your words, do they not? Riku will not."

"You can drop the world thing," Sam says. "I'm not believing it."

The demon crosses his arms. "Finish your spell."

Sam doesn't bother arguing about whether a Latin exorcism qualifies as a spell. Instead, he locks his eyes on the green gaze of the demon and uses the most powerful exorcism he knows. The demon just patiently watches him through it all, until Sam's forced to admit that he might have been premature in declaring him a demon.

"Uh," Sam says.

"Are you done?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I am," he says. He can't quite fight the flush that's working its way up his neck.

"Good," Riku says. He scrubs a hand through his hair and blows out a breath. "At least you didn't try to take my head off. I met someone once who thought my hair color made me evil. Something about being a clone."

"Was it the fact that he's dark?" Yen Sid asks suddenly. "Not all beings react well to a Master of Darkn—"

"Don't call me that!" Riku's hand slashes through the air; Sam squints at the streamers of darkness that drift in its wake.

Light's overrated at this point in his life, Sam thinks. Lucifer rose in a blaze of blinding light, for all that he's associated monsters with the dark. His track record's shit either way, actually, because he listened to something from the dark depths of hell and released something from the radiance of heaven.

He's really not in any place to judge and says as much. "No, it was. Your eyes," Sam makes an abortive movement towards his own eyes and grimaces.

Riku pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes. "When I use the darkness too much, the Ansem in my heart starts to wake up," he says. "He… had yellow eyes."

Now that he's sure the kid's not a demon, Sam feels like a dick. Riku looks a few moments away from crying, if he's honest with himself, in the tough guy way that Dean had when he was that age. "A demon killed my family," he offers to appease his own guilt, "He had yellow eyes. It was the only thing we knew about him for a long time."

"Oh," Riku says softly. "The fairies are supposed to help me with my problem, if that makes you feel better about it."

Sam shrugs. "Fairies? In my experience, they're not all that helpful."

"These are _good_ fairies," Riku stresses.

Yen Sid clears his throat. "There will be time for idle chatter later," he says. "Riku, you, especially, do not have the time to dally." He sweeps out of the room, leaving an awkward quiet in his wake.

Sam leans over to say, "He's kind of a dick," and smiles a little when Riku cracks up suddenly. It's something Dean's said to him before, when he was younger and came home in tears over the normal kids at school.

Nice to know its universal to all kids.

"Yeah," he says, "I don't like most of the King's friends. They're… yeah. Sora will get along with them really well, I bet."

The silence is companionable, at least until they enter another room and Sam sees what he would not in a million years qualify as fairies. They look like grandmothers, for one, and while he does remember the pagan god who was Susie Homemaker a few years ago, supernatural beings generally don't look like old ladies.

They even have that faintly bemused expression Sam's seen on about a thousand little old ladies who've had a run in with the monsters in the dark.

"Oh dear," one of the fairies says, "Oh my. We certainly have our work cut out with you, don't we? Riku, dear, are you going to teach him how to travel the corridors?"

Next to him, Riku blinks. "I wasn't planning on it, Flora. He's already too dark, I don't want him letting more in."

Sam wants to be offended at the idea that he's too dark. He wants to be, but he isn't. He drank demon blood for a year. Dark is probably the least offensive word there is for what he's become.

The green fairy flutters her wings and tuts. "It would probably be best if you did, dear."

Riku makes a considering noise. "It would make it easier to find his brother." Sam's heart pounds in his chest. "What do you think, Merryweather?"

"Shouldn't you be asking me?" Sam blurts. He wants to find Dean, even if Dean wants to hunt him down. He's willing to learn how to _make_ one of those corridors if that's what's going to bring him closer to his brother, demonic powers be damned.

Ruby claimed that he didn't need the demon blood before she died. If that's true and Riku can show him how to use what he has…

"No," Riku says, tilting his head back. "You're going to do whatever it is that's going to help you find your brother fastest, even if it's bad for you. Merryweather?"

"His heart's strong," the blue fairy says. She shrinks in a sudden blaze of blue and flutters to stare at Sam from eye height. He doesn't say anything, but he's repressing the urge to swat at her with the nearest iron object he can find. "I say show him," she says decisively.

"Alright." Riku looks at him for a second, then blows out a breath. "I guess I could spare a few days. Namine says she's having problems, though, so I need to get back soon."

"Of course."

"As for you…" Merryweather taps him on the nose and drifts away to resume her full size. "We've got our work cut out us. The magic's not going to take as well for you. Don't you worry," she adds when Sam starts to ask _why_. "You'll be fine."

"We just need a moment to think," the green fairy adds. "We're not used to dealing with someone from your world."

"Something blue, do you suppose?" Merryweather asks, to which the green fairy responds with a sniff and a, "Certainly not! Do you see the special person in his heart? Green eyes! Green would be best."

Dean has green eyes. Sam twists his mouth, because of _course_ Dean's the only thing in his heart. Dean's his big brother and Sam would die for him, even now, and maybe one day he'll be able to say that to Dean's face and not have the memory of his fingers around his brother's throat rise up behind his eyelids.

"They always do this," says Riku. He's watching them fondly when Sam glances over. "They'll argue about color until they're blue in the face. Princess Aurora always has some… really colorful outfits."

"She looks best in pink," Flora says, snorting delicately. "But do my sisters listen to me? Of course not."

Riku's mouth twitches before he leans over to confide, "Princess Aurora likes blue the best. She keeps it a secret from Flora and Fauna."

"Hmph." Flora puts her hands on her amble hips and purses her mouth. "Such a liar you are, Sir Riku."

"I'm not a knight."

"The king says you are, dear," Fauna says, drifting over. Sam gets the feeling that she'd be patting Riku on the head if she could reach. "The king really knows best about these things. The queen's quite fond of you as well.

"Now," she says and suddenly turns to Sam. "Do you prefer pink or green? Merryweather has washed her hands of this, I'm afraid."

"Green," Sam says instantly. He can just imagine what Dean would say if he showed up with pink on.

Flora tuts again, but leaves him alone. "And this is for you, dear," she says.

Riku holds out his hand for a spool of thin black cloth. "Thanks," he says. "And this'll…?"

"It'll help you control his darkness in your heart," Fauna says. "But it's not perfect, dear-heart. It's more like a stop gap than it is a fix it."

"That's all I need." He spins on his heel to give the green fairy a faint look of warning. "You guys should make sure to make something that will help Sam blend in to the outer worlds, though. You don't want him showing up in a coat around Game Preserve. He'd stick out like a sore thumb."

"A necklace, I think," Merryweather says, then, "Stay still now, dear, we need to measure."

Sam obligingly stills.

His life is fucking weird.


End file.
